Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat screen, Great build quality, Good camera, Good battery
Reviewed in Canada on March 18, 2023
I’ll be comparing it with the iPhone for the most part cuz I’m in Apple’s ecosystem for quite a while. For one, the base S23 is in the same price category as iPhone 14. Yet for the same money, it does not compromise on giving you the 120hz display, triple cameras, and the same chip as the S23+ and Ultra. This makes it very attractive for me as an apple user. Now the other notable feature is that it's INCREDIBLE light, way lighter than the iPhone 14 Pro (24% lighter) while feeling very sturdy.
The screen is great, the 1080p resolution is sharp enough that it's almost impossible to tell any pixels apart. And the 120hz refresh rate is a real difference maker, it's UNACCEPTABLE for me for have 60hz at this price point anymore especially you wanna keep the devices for years to come. Samsung does not cut corners here...
Performance is great day to day, but still, the CPU not as fast as Apple's A16 chip in benchmarks. However, the GPU is quite a bit faster than the A16. And because of this, it can handle the most demanding games like Genshin Impact with very high frame rates. If you tweak it using the official game plugins, it can hit almost 60fps on the highest settings for quite a while.
The cameras are great. Again, hardware wise, there's no cutting corners, you get all three cameras. Samsung does not omit the telephoto camera here. And all three cameras are of good quality and the night shots are surprisingly good.
Lastly,, the battery life is pretty adequate for its size. For me, it can go for a day on a single charge. 6-7 hrs screen on time.
The good:
1. Samsung promises 4 years of OS updates + 1 year of security update. This is very good for any Android phones. It just seams to me that Samsung pours a lot of loves into these devices this time...
2. The phantom black S23 is gorgeous. The aluminum frame has a tiny purple hint to it. But it looks premium. I'd say it looks better than the green one and the graphite one that you could only order online. (Obviously, its a different calculus to compare it against the cream and lavender colours)
3. The 8 Gen 2 chip inside is one of the more efficient ones over the past few generations, it stays cool and consumes less battery on average. It's a pretty major upgrade especially considering that most chips' performance is advancing very slowly these days.
4. I am a fan of flat screen design with even borders all round, this is exactly it.
The bad:
1. There's no charger included, but it tops out at 25w so not a big deal anyway.
2. The side button is a little extra wobbly, which isn't great.
3. Adding fingerprints is slow as hell sometimes, very painful to use.
4. 8GB of ram. The s23 doing alright today, but if you gonna live out that 5 years of support, that could be a bottleneck in maybe 3 years time.